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Jeff St. John

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Canary Media: Bill Would End California Experiment with Income-Based Electric Bills

Posted by Jeff St. John on Feb 7, 2024

Canary Media reports on the California lawmakers’ efforts to overturn the California Public Utilities Commission’s plan to propose income-graduated fixed fees with Assembly Bill 1999. The article quotes Edson Perez and Brian Turner on how ratepayers will be affected by this and the consequences of this fixed charge.
 
Of all the ways California regulators are proposing to rein in fast-rising electric utility rates, few are as controversial as the plan to charge customers for electricity service based on how much money they make.
 
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Topics: United In The News, California, Brian Turner, Edson Perez

Canary Media: FERC takes a big step to get more clean energy on the US grid

Posted by Jeff St. John on Jul 31, 2023

Canary Media examines the newest approval of reforms by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to improve the efficiency of interconnection projects, quoting Caitlin Marquis on the anticipated positive and negative impacts of the commission's ruling.

The U.S. has far more clean energy projects seeking to connect to the grid than utilities and grid operators can handle. It’s a crisis that has been decades in the making, but one that must be resolved in the next few years if the country is to meet its climate goals.

Last Thursday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a sweeping set of reforms to address one facet of that crisis: the need to streamline and modernize the rules and processes that govern how power projects interconnect to the nation’s transmission grids.

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Topics: United In The News, Caitlin Marquis, FERC

Canary Media: Clean energy dodges a bullet in the Texas legislature

Posted by Jeff St. John on May 31, 2023

Canary Media reports on the outcome of the recently concluded Texas legislative session, quoting Matthew Boms on how the legislature avoided passing bills that would have derailed the state's clean energy industry's efforts.

The best thing that Doug Lewin, president of Texas-based energy consultancy Stoic Energy, can say about the just-concluded Texas legislative session is that it could have been much, much worse. 

Lawmakers failed to pass bills that would have helped stabilize and clean up the Texas grid, but at least they also, at the last minute, avoided passing bills that would have crushed the state’s clean energy industry.

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Topics: United In The News, Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance, Texas, Matthew Boms

Canary Media: Fixing the US power grid: A challenge for 2023 and beyond

Posted by Jeff St. John on Dec 29, 2022

Canary Media detailed the need to strengthen the country’s electricity system, quoting Amisha Rai on how the US can build out its energy infrastructure. Read snippets below and the full article here

The grid may be the weakest link in the chain connecting the U.S. to a clean energy future. 

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Topics: 21st Century Electricity System, United In The News, Amisha Rai

Canary Media: Clean energy would get big boost from new climate bill. Just how big?

Posted by Jeff St. John on Jul 28, 2022

Canary Media detailed how funding from the IRA would be allocated, quoting AEE's Harry Godfrey on the massive impact the bill will have on US clean energy technologies. Read snippets below and the full article here.

Senator Joe Manchin has agreed to work with Democratic Senate colleagues to quickly pass a climate and health bill that could direct nearly $370 billion over 10 years toward clean energy, electric vehicles, pollution reduction and energy security — potentially the largest-ever single federal investment in fighting climate change. 

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Topics: Federal Policy, United In The News, Manufacturing and Infrastructure, Harrison Godfrey

Canary Media: The US needs to build a bigger, stronger grid. FERC has a plan for that

Posted by Jeff St. John on Apr 25, 2022

Canary Media profiled FERC's transmission policy, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis on how modern infrastructure can better capture the benefits of clean energy. Read snippets below and the full story here.

Over the past nine months, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been working on a major reform to U.S. transmission-grid policy, one that clean-energy advocates say could determine whether or not the country will be able to build the vast amount of solar and wind power needed to combat climate change.

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Topics: Wholesale Markets, United In The News, Jeff Dennis

Canary Media: FERC Order 2222: Experts offer cheers and jeers for first round of filings

Posted by Jeff St. John on Mar 14, 2022

Canary Media detailed how U.S. grid operators are planning to open up their energy markets to distributed energy, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis on FERC Order 2222 and initial implementation plans and Caitlin Marquis on baseline erosion. Read snippets below and the full article here

The future of the power grid lies in tapping the gigawatts of capacity coming from distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar, home batteries, electric vehicles and energy-smart devices — DERs for short. Ultimately, this will radically reconfigure how the U.S. electricity grid works. But getting there will be a long and complicated process...

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Topics: Wholesale Markets, United In The News, Caitlin Marquis, Jeff Dennis

Canary Media: The House’s Big Budget Reconciliation Bill Would Be A Bonanza For Clean Energy

Posted by Jeff St. John on Sep 12, 2021

Canary Media outlined tax credits and direct pay for clean energy, storage, and transmission in the House reconciliation bill, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis on ITC details. Read snippets below and the full story here.

Tax credits and direct-pay provisions for a panoply of clean energy and carbon-reduction technologies. Incentives to expand and strengthen the nation’s power grids, encourage adoption of electric vehicles and electrify buildings. And a program to push U.S. utilities to make use of these technologies to reach an 80 percent carbon-free electricity supply by 2030.

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Topics: United In The News

Canary Media: Western States Look to Regional Transmission Organizations to Boost Clean Energy's Pathways to Market

Posted by Jeff St. John on Jun 3, 2021

Canary Media summarized the possibility for RTO expansion in the West, citing AEE’s Sarah Steinberg and Amisha RaiRead snippets below and the full article here.

The Western U.S. is a hotbed for renewable power development. What it lacks are the regional regulatory and economic structures to build the transmission lines needed to move that clean power to far-off population centers and share it across a region facing increasing grid-reliability challenges driven by climate change.

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Topics: United In The News

Greentech Media: Growing Energy Markets: Southwest Power Pool Expands Day-Ahead Trading to the West

Posted by Jeff St. John on Feb 1, 2021

Greentech Media profiled Southwest Power Pool’s Western Energy Imbalance Service Market, quoting AEE’s Amisha Rai on market integration. Read excerpts below and the full story here.

Interstate grid operator Southwest Power Pool has expanded its wholesale energy market, the latest step in a series of nationwide moves aimed at bringing more efficiency to parts of the country rich in renewable energy potential but lacking in the energy trading regimes to make the best use of it.

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Topics: United In The News